The community needs help
Today after the complaint of some players and my outburst on the telegram, I decided to come here to make an appeal.
I've been a player since 2016 and what attracted me to the game was the challenge of the different ways you can choose to play.
Anyone who plays for some time will remember the various emotions we experience to climb a mega field covering several cities or all the logistics to be able to capture a strategic portal, unfortunately I believe that everyone will agree that this will not be lost over time.
Today it is even disheartening for you to join a large number of agents to create a mega field and a person on the home sofa can take down in 5 minutes, all the logistics, time and money of many involved go down the drain in minutes and very discouraging.
With the exception of the beginning of the game, I think we never had a wave of spoofer as big as we are now, the community needs help, I remember that I moderated a game in 2013 and we had more resources to stop this type of cheating than we have today at ingress almost 20 years later
We urgently need to create measures that can at least minimize this problem, I will mention a few below:
1- Create a team to help fight spoofers, this team could act as a level.
2 - Link the Ingress account to the cell phone number or IMEI, even if you do not block the use at least you would have control for an investigation, in addition to making it difficult to use the game in emulators.
3 - Prevent the sale of items within the game, with some scripts it would be easy to identify these transactions.
4 - Increase the inventory space, which could even be a paid product, even I see a huge potential that could be explored within the game to obtain sponsorships.
I see that these and other actions would help to rescue the essence of the game, bring new players into action, and keep the spirit of the game alive.
That's why I come here to make an appeal, don't let the ticket die, don't let the game lose its essence, together we are stronger. spoofer has no faction.
Prazer Apokalypsi
Comments
Exactly. Real facts.
Good point, @Apokalypsi and thanks for tagging me. Indeed, we can’t let the spirit of the game die and sink into oblivion... Your concerns are the same of the many fair players which have abandoned Ingress due to dishonest players. =\
I feel 100% exact the same. Simples scripts could work for many cases of cheating.
No excuse for not banning cell phones and linked accounts in different games.
All I can think is that Niantic in many cases overlooks dishonest behavior because banning so many players could cause a profit loss. There is no other reason I can find for this Niantic way of doing things.
Morning, buddy.
I can only agree with what you're saying...
Being invested in the clean game it's sometimes hard to stay motivated to keep going.
Spoofers the multi-accounts, non legit portal protection groups on wayfarer, players who **** other players either to get them to change factions or to stop playing...
In spite of the reports and the mails few actions go to their term and the "bad" Players remain unpunished...
It's high time Ingress became a game where cheating stops... Otherwise it will lose all interest for the real intruders and event organizers...
Dordone57
We're working to improve how we address abuse in-game, both on the policy side as well as our communication. We know how important this is to the health of Ingress, and we're redirecting more focus towards this.
@blightboy to be clear, the current issues with banning bad actors are completely unrelated to profit. It's very much the opposite. The bad actors hurt our bottomline, in no way do they help us, because they drive good Agents away. It's a complicated problem, and we will make improvements.
I think I can speak for the whole community (yes, that's rare, I know!) when I say that if there's anything we, your players, can do to help, just let us know and we'll do it.
For these and others reasons, that I’m stoping to play Ingress. I have 4 years in the Ingress too. In this time I stayed at two anomaly’s and four mission days. Around my house, I saw 3 or 4 new players of both factions, working to destroy the game and all that the community work to create. Several portals captured and linked due to block the agents to create your Fields. In Áreas that just have Resistance Players, the links are being make by an Agent of Resistance and in Enlightened Areas, links to block the Enlightened players. Tickets was already opened, with evidences, however without success. I’m very sad with this situation. Niantic needs to create some mechanisms to minimize it! How our friend above says, create a Level 1 team, using the Ingress Community, to get the first evidences and forward to Niantic to decide to Ban or not. One script to detect the several accounts in one unique device is a good idea too.
Ingress’s farewell shouldn’t be so melancholy, because if it stays the way is it, it will be the game’s only destination!!!
Regards, @lmlmartins
I'm glad this topic is being brought up! I love Ingress and wanna play for years to come.
About a year a player decided to play only to destroy the game and he played solely by spoofing. I collected proofs and he got banned. But for one week. And he still spoofing.
I think the three strike policy only encourages spoofing because if they are in danger, they lay low, like this spoofing I mentioned, and then they go back to cheating.
I hope this appeal makes Niantic focus in anti cheating measures, because there's this felling that the game is rapidly dying over the virus of spoofing.
Great @Apokalypsi! It is sad to see bad players end the game. It is time for NIANTIC to take action. There are spoofers recognized by both teams, who have already received several complaints, and nothing happens. This discourages good players. Something has to change.
CauNas
How is it that complicated?
Concordo com tudo que você disse @Apokalypsi, existem inúmeras formas de acabar com essa situação de spoofers e contas múltiplas, a ´primeira coisa a ser feita é acabar com essa situação de ficar trocando de dispositivo a todo momento, onde o usuário apaga o cache e loga com outra conta, a conta pode ser atrelada ao imei como você citou, endereço de MAC, ou mesmo de uma forma mais radical ao CPF do proprietário da conta, fazendo com que haja um vinculo que seja menos manipulável, pois uma hora a quantidade de CPFs que essa pessoa usa vai acabar, endereço de MAC pode ser alterado? pode, mas da muito mais trabalho que um simples e-mail, pois cria-se um e-mail sem nenhuma necessidade de validação de dados reais dos jogadores/agentes.
Ou a NIANTIC toma uma atitude ou o Ingress vai decair cada vez mais, pois migrei para o Ingress devido aos relatos de aqui ser um jogo mais sério e com menos spoofers que no Pokemon Go, onde lá o que você mais vê são jogadores com múltiplas contas.
I, like so many other agents I know, couldn’t agree more, @Apokalypsi.
The apparent tolerance towards spoofers and bad players in general seems to be the new way of dealing with those situations. Get used to it or get out.
And many players, indeed, are quitting because is just impossible to compete against spoofers destroying in seconds fields that took weeks of planning to get up, or that have and endless amount of keys from inaccessible portals where there’s no phone sign.
The Trusted Reporter program seemed to be a breath of fresh air on that field, but it just doesn’t work. Rarely they do anything and question the person doing the report instead of checking the suspect or refuse to take action, even when the other faction TR did the exact same thing weeks before (this happened recently here).
If nothing is done soon I’m sure many more agents will end up quitting the game, since much of the real joy and challenge it once had is gone.
I agree that the increasing amount of bad actors spoofing down portals that take time to get to, just to troll legit players trying to enjoy the adventure needs to stop
I do really WANT to believe that Niantic is working toward elimination of spoofers in the game, but I KNOW that the management team must answer to the shareholders. Answering the community anxiety about spoofers is one of the topics about community management.
All the approaches suggested by @Apokalypsi could be implemented long Ago, but would Niantic permaban an account that is proffitable? Or permaban the cell phone? What I see otherwise is a "strike" system that just encourages bad behavior, because it gives clues to the bad people about what is "strikeable" and what ia not, and what rules can be pushed.
Unless I see some work toward real elimination of spoofers, I will stand for what I know, rather for what I want It to be.
Do we have any clue if a confirmed spoofer will get an autoban/deletion, or if is possible to receive just a warning strike or temporary ban?
So sad you feel like quitting Ingress, @lmlmartins, but I understand your reasons - as the reasons of many others also. In other hand, I believe the more good players leave the game, the more abusers get strong.
This specific topic came in the right time to call everyone to share their feelings and (why not?) even more: to share suggestions, I think. And I’m glad it came.
So... Could you stick around a bit more? ^^
The problem is reporting on the standard robot form never get handle. Even if you have enough evidence the ticket does not get looked up unless you know someone inside niantic. I feel it is very disappointing and sad as abusers seem to be driving off good agents. I my self are on the verge of stop playing when one area decided to send 20 abusers to take out all hiking, bgan, and local portals.
Ins't anybody wondering how do get "almost 20 years" from 2013 to 2020?
About inventory space, I think it is OK the way it is, perhaps just missing the Medialocker. Niantic is the first company I've met that allows multiaccs in games where having multiaccs is a huge advantage.
Let’s focus on the main problem:
We get to know many cases of multiple accounts serving as backpack for a main account, and I guess I don’t need to say it’s not fair with many good players, specially the ones who keep items strategically. AFAIK, having more than one account is not allowed.
This said, let me ask: do you think it is an advantage (I mean “allowing” more than one acc per player)? If you don’t, what more do you think we could suggest to prevent bad players to use this kind of strategy to take advantage over us?
Well, I don't quite understand the question since I already stated that multiaccs are a huge advantage in this game at least.
And, yes I am VERY WELL AWARE that it not allowed, but yet so very few times a punishment is applied for this reason, so what difference is there actually? Communities aply their own rules and, the way I see it, if communities are the only real difference, then something is wrong!
About prevention, well, tricky part comes in because first you need to solve the access problem: how much access to personal data are you willing to requesto to each player? How are you going to handle it? Do you think it is going to increase your player base? Don't forget Niantic is a company, therefore money is priorized, and less players always mean less money.
Current situation is bad, we all agree... well, anyone that really wants to see will agree :)
Ok, it was not clear to me if the issue of multiple accounts was a criticism, or if it should be considered a minor problem. Thanks for the answer. =]
Oh, well, if that is the question, it is a problem, it always has, but if I had to place it in a list of problems sorted by urgency, it would be almost the top one. I say 'almost' because Top One is and will always be spoofers.
Does this fulfill it?
@NianticBrian hello. The worst part of it all is when you report on the bot, with all the info you need ( portal link, name of portal, time/date) and get a bot answer ("we have carefully reviewed your report")... my last report (8068542) the spoof entered a cemitery at 23:17 pm and sent links from there.. the cemitery closes at 17h. I sent on the report the oficial time of operattion from website and nothing.. the spoof is still active in other city now 😂.. you can only ban someone if you use the trusted report bot (but need to be urgent and non city related) or got a trusted report budy.. sadlife
welll problem with spoofing down BAFs is, that whole BAF design is terrible. players spend huge amount of time for it, they spend huge amoun t of money, and niantic has no cut from it. also most of them are not good for enviroment (hundreds of kilometers traveled to build triangles, that other faction has to **** (and travel some distance to do so)). multicell fields are tricky thing, and killing spoofers wil not make it better. without spoofers, sooner or later you will end with cities under unkilllable fields. which is not greenlighting spoofers, but just piointing at design flaw of this game.
yeah, whole BAF game is nice, but mostly boring for most part of players. since they cannot play dner baf (but in prime they can at least see roads in game)
Taht is not correct, the social media is what Niantic gets and also what presents this game as a great game.
How do you know this "spoofer" isn't the cemetery guard? Or someone other who has access?
@NianticBrian I made this post a few months ago and it seems that nothing has changed in relation to this, spoofers are doing what they want in the game, the answers remain the same and without any effective action by Niantic. We need help, agents waste time and money traveling months of work to have everything destroyed in a few hours.
This account was created 2 days ago, destroyed half the state and closed the field everywhere, even with several reports it is still active.
The worst of it all is seeing players stop playing, others coming to you for help, some even questioning the extent to which FairPlay is worth keeping in mind that N Nia takes no action, there is a player who is already thinking of stopping or even going to the dark side of the force to try to balance the game, this is sad but our dear game is getting lost
bots only make legit players stop playing and niantic looses players that would have spent money ingame, what do bots earn niantic? nothing.. its very bad for the pr if the game has bots and cheaters that roams free and nothing happens to them yet massive reports....
Legal concerns. Tech concerns. Take too heavy a hand and you run afoul of things like laws, hyperactive bans that need corrective measures after the fact.